F11-MANA3001 - Larry Page 104

Larry Page

"Basically, our goal is to organize the world's informationand to make it universally accessible and useful."

Lawrence Page
March 26, 1973
Co-Founder of Google
Net Worth: $16.7 Billion

History

It has become a common thing, pop culture, to hear someone say: "google it". It isn't even a verb but rather the name of the search browser Lawrence "Larry" Page, along with Sergey Brin, founded in 1997. Larry was born and raised in Lansing, Michigan surrounded by a family of programers or what we may sometimes call "computer geeks". Influenced by the environment in which he grew up, he took the initiative of exploring and learning about computer programing and technology. Soon after graduating East Lansing High School, he enrolled in Michigan University, where he graduated with honors. Following this, Larry began graduate school in Standford University with a degree in Computer Science. Here is where the magic happened. Larry was interested in finding a way to search for websites by the relevance of certain topic. At the time, when searching for a particular topic, webpages show up in order of how many times the word, or phrase, being searched appeared in a certain webpage, not by relevance. He then figured out of way to determine the relevance of a webpage "by the number of links leading to it from other sites" (Academy of Achievement). Hs research was thorough and complicated and that is when he extended and invitation to an expert in data mining; Sergey Brin. Together they published numerous articles which included "The Anatomy of a Large Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine". This article in particular ended up being "one of the most downloaded scientific articles in the history of the internet" (Academy of Achievement). What we can find rather interesting is the fact that, as Mark Zuckerberg did later on in 2004, Page and Brin put together a couple of personal computers in their own dorm where they ran the prototype of their search engine [...] 'BackRub'" (academy). It didn't take long for them to launch Google.com in 1997.
You may be wondering where did the name Google came from. Well, it is in fact derivate from the name "googol" which stands for the number one followed by a hundred zeros. Afterwards, they went on to finish their master's degree and "took a leave of absence from their Phd program to concentrate in building their business" (academy). From a dorm, to a garage, to the google complex, Google.com grew rapidly and successfully skyrocketing Larry Page and Sergey Brin into the entrepreneurial world. Larry Page assumed the role of CEO and Brin as the President developing the following mission statement: "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". In 2004, Page and Brin where the recipients of the Academy Golden Plate Award, which is granted by the Achievement Academy's International Achievements Summit in London. Later on, "Eric Schmidt was appointed CEO, with Page taking the role of President for Products" (academy). The three of them worked together as entrepreneurs, exponentially increasing the profit of Google. By the time Page and Brin where 27, they where multi-billionaires. Impressive, no?

But it doesn't end there. Besidesbeing able to create one of the most successful businesses in the world, Page wanted to"maintain and develop a creative and collaborative environment" (academy) within their company headquarters. If you where to walk in into the Googleplex, you will find pools, more than 18 cafeterias with diverse menus, giant rubber balls, pianos, amongst many other things. This helps create a wonderful fun environment that encourages employees to work and stay motivated.

Personality

Larry Page's personality is one in which many would find typical of a "computer nerd". Page

exhibits extreme introversion, as he is not a member of any social media website and really doesn't value these types of add ons to the company too highly. Google has gone through countless failures in the social media market, namely Dodgeball, Wave, Jaiku, among others. 1 He has been described as having "few social graces", by an ex-PR team member, who also mentioned that Page has large issues in trusting others. Larry Page, CEO and co-founder of Google, is extremely smart and analyzes nearly ever situation. These qualities describe an introvert perfectly, as they typically derive their energy from within and almost always enjoy thinking and taking apart ideas in search of the best, most creative one. He is so introverted some people who have had experiences with him have questioned whether he has some type of disorder. Steven Levy, of wired.com, writes, "Page was not a social animal—those who interacted with him often wondered if there were a jigger of Asperger’s in the mix". 2

Page most obviously demonstrates a high degree of intuition. Page was taking apart computers from a very young age, he also attended University of Michigan for his undergraduate degree before going to Standford to get his a Masters in computer science. Page never is satisfied with an idea, he always takes that idea and will nitpick it until he finds, what he thinks, to be an even better solution or product. He has a huge internal drive and is always open to new inventions. Page is an extremely creative individual, as evidenced by his creation of Google and subsequent projects while working with Google. This would classify as a person who is open to new experiences. To further classify Page according to the Big 5, he would exhibit a highly conscientious person, as well as emotionally stable. However he would not be a very agreeable person, as stated earlier, he always has to try to improve fellow employees ideas. The CEO has a high emotional stability, evidenced by his extreme confidence in himself and abilities. Based on many of the things mentioned the Google entrepreneur would fit the category of an INTP (Introvert, Intuition, Thinking, Perceiving) individual when looking at the MBTI instrument. When analyzing his personality qualities, he seems to represent an ideal CEO because he is always striving to improve his company and even is looking to use his wealth and power of his company to make changes to the environment.

Values

Values, whether personal, social or cultural, have a direct affiliation with future courses of actions and outcomes. Values not only influence goals to be achieved, but they shape the behaviors used to achieve those goals. In order to help provide an insight on whether Larry Page, the newly re-installed chief executive officer of Google, will have a positive or negative effect on his company, one has to look at the beliefs he holds most important. Being one of the co-founders of Google, Page made it his task to decide on ten main principles he wanted to help guide his company’s actions. The ten main beliefs agreed upon are the following: “Focus on the user and all else will follow, It’s best to do one thing really, really well, Fast is better than slow, Democracy on the web works, You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer, You can make money without doing evil, There’s always more information out there, The need for information crosses all borders, You can be serious without a suit, Great just isn’t good enough”. 3What a person can derive from the standards above is that their primary goal is satisfying their users and providing dependability for them. Since technology changes from day-to-day, Page chooses to focus on instrumental values rather than their internal goals or bottom line (terminal values). This refreshing and unselfish outlook creates a more inviting and positive environment and users, people like you and me, end up being more satisfied when it comes to Google’s efficiency. After learning of Page’s personality and upbringing, one should not be surprised by the fact the Page values strong, idiosyncratic leaders who know what they excel at and are proactively aggressive with getting their ideas heard.4 This way of thinking led him to hire one of the world’s largest research groups to focus solely on solving search problems and continuously improve the Google site. There is no doubt Larry Page values highly hard work when it comes to the employees he chooses to hire. Also, creativity is a common word that comes to mind when describing Google. To reference a few examples- the weekly Friday staff meetings where employees are allowed to dress in casual attire and sit on yoga balls or the ever-changing Google search engine where the colors and shapes of the word “Google” are changed to match a season or holiday. These are just a few examples that help demonstrate the open-mindness and receptivity to new ideas Larry Page invites into his corporation. When speaking on ethical terms, Page does a respectable job in staying away from displaying flashy ads or spam pop-ups. In fact, Google does not allow ads to be displayed on results pages unless they are relevant where they are shown and does not accept any pop-up advertising because it tends to be distracting to the user. Larry Page’s current actions hint at what he values most, and is proving to be successful. According to The Daily Beast, “Larry Page took heat for giving all employees a 10 percent raise and hiring 1,900 new employees”.5 His method is to focus on delivering a great service to his customers rather than crunching numbers and focusing on the revenues Google generates. This change of behavior that Page is deciding to exercise is a fresh, new and innovative way that may provide a bright outlook to the company’s success in the future.

Motivation

Google is known for its fresh and modern approach to business. Larry Page and Google have implemented several incentives and methods to motivate employees in a variety of ways. As previously mentioned, employees of Google are allowed to wear whatever they please during their Friday meetings. While this may not arouse workers to be more productive, it helps sustain Google's goal-directed behavior. This hygiene factor gives Google employees the ability to remain relaxed in their working environment and has proven to be successful because it has been sustained for many years. Recently, Google gave raises to its workforce

which totaled 20 million dollars. Employees also received a $1000 bonus. 6. To make things even better, Google sweetened the pot by paying for the taxes on the $1000 bonus. Larry Page has created an equity sensitive appeal to his workforce which creates an excellent sense of community. However, the 20 million dollar company-wide raise was proportional to each employees salary by 10%, which allows certain employees that may have a sense of entitlement or benevolence to maintain their current status. Therefore, employees will continue to be productive by maintaining their input to their job due to the overall equity provided by Google.

One major emphasis of any business is to improve performance. Due to the generous raises that Page and Google dispersed among the company, employees have felt more appreciated because of their chance of receiving awards based on their performance. As a result, employees will designate more effort towards their jobs based on the Expectancy Model for Motivation because effort drives performance. Larry Page, in an attempt to boost the performance of employees, has made an announcement to the company that 25% of their annual bonus will be tied to the success or failure of Google's social strategy in 2011. 7. Page has instilled a belief of instrumentality to his company by tying the success of Google's social strategy to employee bonuses. Page has ingeniously created a relationship between his employee's performance and rewards. This will drive Google and its workers to achieve its goals while creating a team oriented mentality. Page has created a motivation model that helps Google two ways. First, it improves the performance of its employees. Secondly, his model helps retain employees by rewarding them for their work. Both aspects of Page's model are essential to the success and longevity of Google.